PS3 finally confirmed

Two bundles of the PS3, one with a 20 gigabyte hard drive and one with a 60 gigabyte one.

November 11th launch in Japan.

20 Gigabyte PS3 - US$499 US/Europe November 17th60 Gigabyte PS3 - US$599 US/Europe November 17th.By the end of March 2007, they will have shipped 6 million units. (This basically means there is going to be a worldwide shortage of PS3's on Nov 17th. But better than with XBOX 360 )

The PS3 will have an online marketplace that will, at the very least, allow you to download songs for your SingStar game. It will also work with the PSP in interesting ways, such as using the PSP as a "wing-mirror" for Formula-One racing. In this mode, the PSP shows you the rear view while your 60" Plasma shows you the front view.

The Blu-ray disc drive sets the PS3 apart from the XBOX 360, which currently has a standard DVD player built-in but plans to offer HD-DVD, a Blu-ray competitor, in the near future.

A big surprise: the new PlayStation 3 Controller. It looks and feels very much like a PlayStation 2 Dual Shock controller, but it has a secret inside: tilt and motion sensitivity with six degrees of freedom. While they demonstrated mostly tilt-based functionality, the controller is reported to also track horizontal and vertical movement, which emulates most of the Nintendo Wii controller functionality. PS. For those that don't know, Nintendo's next generation system was previously called Nintendo Revolution but in the past few weeks it has been officially called WII. (Pronounced Wee)This is the actual stock photo of what the PS3 will look like.Here are the differences between the "base" and "premium" version of the console. * You lose 40GB (20GB base vs. 60GB) * You lose HDMI output * You lose MemoryStick / SD / CompactFlash slots * You lose 802.11 b/g wireless * You save $100Bottom line? Skip the base version. Why? The whole idea of Blue-ray is True HDTV, but without HDMI its just a very expensive beefed up PS2 machine.

PlayStation 3 is going to be great. Blu-ray isn't Betamax as many say, it will truly be a format that people use. It has so many advantages over Microsoft and Nintendo. Over the Xbox 360, PS3 will have motion detection in the controllers, a 60 GB HD, blu-ray playing (those will cost 700+ when they come out), exclusivity in games, better processor, and the fan base. I can't wait.